Python Newsletter, January 17, 2023

Greetings, Python Fans!

Wow, I must have been relaxing over the holidays because here it is, the 17th of January, and this is the FIRST newsletter of this brand new year.

Well, sorry if this sounds pretty 2022, but once again, we’re going to share a roundup of what’s new on CodeSolid and some excellent articles and projects we found elsewhere.

What’s New On CodeSolid

Python Parquet and Arrow: Using PyArrow with Pandas
The Arrow in-memory data format is a cross-language standard for tabular and hierarchical data.   Parquet is an efficient storage format for such data featuring fast access and small file sizes – crucial elements for large data sets.  PyArrow, the library that supports both, works brilliantly with Pandas, and we explore how to do this in this article.

Python Function Exercises With Solutions
I know this is pretty basic for readers of this newsletter, but feel free to forward it to your friend/cousin/niece who’s learning. As part of our series on Python Functions, we put together this collection of beginner-focused practice exercises.  Some of these were adopted from exercises we worked through to learn C – back in the stone age, that was.  (It was fun coding on dinosaur bones).  There’s also a link in the exercises to the online notebook if you want to run them without installing anything.

A Shout-Out to a Popular Article

Matplotlib vs. Seaborn
This article by a frequent CodeSolid contributor, Aizhamal Zhetigenova, is fairly recent but has already generated over 500 views in the last month, which usually doesn’t happen that quickly.  That’s probably because she really nailed the topic, giving example after example showing how to do different plots using either library.

Around The Web

An Open Source Python Project CI Pipeline
This is one of those articles in the “I wish I’d done that” category.  One way a newcomer to the industry can distinguish herself is to have one or two showroom-ready projects, and this project fits in nicely with that idea.  Having CI integrated into the project is an excellent way to take a portfolio project to the next level.

Python Sorted Containers
These sorted collection classes are implemented in Python and add new sorted containers to the collection classes available in Python. If you’re interested in that sort of thing, you might also visit my article on Useful Python Collection Classes You May Not Know.

And the winner in the category “great article that also has a funny title” is …

How to improve Python packaging, or why fourteen tools are at least twelve too many
Python’s tools for managing and distributing packages are embarrassing for a language that otherwise got as many things right as Python did.  This article does an excellent job of surveying the many available options.